Goodwin’s song for Ann Lovett, 40 years after she died giving birth in a graveyard

By Andy Spearman

Every now and then comes a reminder of what a dark place “Ireland of the welcomes” was really like back in the eighties. One such trigger came in an email this week from local musician Paddy Goodwin.

Veering away from his usual song writing style, Paddy has released a very poignant song and video about the lonely death of Ann Lovett, a 15-year-old schoolgirl who died in 1984 shortly after giving birth to a stillborn baby boy at a Grotto in Granard, County Longford.

That tragic event, which attracted much publicity, outrage, and public sympathy at the time, took place forty years ago this month on the 31st January.

Paddy wrote the song six years ago but, as he told Drogheda Life, it is very different to his other work but something that comes from his heart.

“It doesn’t fit in well with my other work, it’s quite dark and a class of a protest song with something of an Elvis Costello vibe” he said. “To be honest, I didn’t really know what to do with it. So it stayed in the vaults until now.

“I wrote the song in 2018 as a tribute to Ann and a sad reflection of how Ireland was in 1984. It is written in her voice and I hope people can take the time to listen to it.

“It is a harrowing song to reflect a harrowing time in this country when there were a lot of narrow minds at play and people were emigrating in their droves. If people listen to it, even if they were not around back then, they will get it.”

Four months after Ann Lovett’s lonely death in Granard, a newborn baby boy was found dead with a broken neck and 28 stab wounds on White Strand beach in County Kerry.

When these tragic events were unfolding Paddy was a student at Trinity College Dublin and deeply involved in student politics and the unsuccessful Anti-Amendment Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment banning abortion.

“Hopefully we can move on from those very dark days” Paddy said. “But we must never forget.”